Liberals, Conservatives and the Written Word

May 12, 2002

by Bruce Walker

Big Brother, the mythical leader of Oceania in George Orwells 1984
found books serious threats. Although people were not made intentionally
illiterate, as in Fahrenheit 451, books were rare and most textual
documents were routinely destroyed and replaced by new documents. Even
more critically, many words were simply abolished and the meaning of words
was consciously twisted. Modern liberals view written documents with unchanged
meanings and the words in those documents with the same animosity that
the Inner Party of Orwells classic did.

This fear and loathing appears in strange ways. Why are pornographers
like Hugh Hefner and Larry Flynt supporting the same political parties
and candidates as radical feminists? Because pornographers deal in images
rather than words, and feminists deal in emotions rather than words.

Why do conservatives dominate talk radio, the Internet, and the best
selling book lists today? Because the values we hold dear do not change,
the facts against which we judge events are grounded upon something beyond
opinion and desire, and the principles which derive from these values
and facts are internally consistent.

Does this mean that conservatives do not make bad value judgments, get
facts wrong, or develop boneheaded policies from time to time? No, of
course not. Imperfection is something which conservatives understand to
be an absolute feature of life. The process of learning requires history,
and history requires words.

The spoken word is a magnificent way to communicate with contemporaries
within physical or electronic range of our voice, but the spoken word
speaks poorly over the ages - we understand the impact of Lincolns
Gettysburg Address or Churchills great radio address in 1940 less
by listening to them than by reading about the effect of these spoken
words upon those ears which heard them.

Written words, by contrast, speak across centuries. So when we read Psalms
or the beautiful beginnings of the Declaration of Independence or the
writings of great modern men like Dr. Thomas Sowell or C.S. Lewis or George
Orwell, simple text conveys the whole of the message. In these written
words is an equality which has also terrified tyrants and monsters.

Ponder the liberating processes in human history. Torah, the first five
books of the Jewish Bible, came out of the emancipating deeds of God in
the lives of the Hebrews in Egypt. Even when smashed by Assyrian and Babylonian
thug-kings, Torah itself remained indestructible. Through it, Jewish boys
learned to read and to study. Even today, among devout Jews, when a son
is said to be "studying" it means reading and analyzing these
sacred books.

Ancient Greece and Rome both incorporated bits and pieces of what we
treasure in politics. Each looked with special reverence to written laws
publically displayed. Solon was the great Athenian lawgiver, not because
of his wisdom in laws but because of his wisdom in reducing laws to writing,
publishing the writing by physical inscription, and making those inscriptions
the common property of all citizens.

The printing of large copies of bibles in colloquial languages did much
more to liberate the peoples of Europe than any particular military victory
or great orator. Through these bibles - the Geneva Bible, the Great Bible,
and our beloved King James Bible - men and women learned to see themselves
as equal creatures with kings and emperors.

Abraham Lincoln read books, especially the Bible, and from these he grounded
himself firmly in those truths and ideas with which he would carry America
through a withering storm. In his Gettysburg Address, Lincoln opens with
a harkening back to words written eighty-seven years earlier by Thomas
Jefferson. Writings - ever writings - have guided good men to great things.

The written word links us with all the lessons of history and checks
the tendency to embellish or lie about events. Books, pamphlets, essays,
and polemics live after the death of the author. They grant a dignity
and a wisdom to the dead which all who live on the crest of the present
too easily forget. Conservatives, who wish to listen to Amos and Adam
Smith and who wish to speak to the world a century from now can do so
with the written word.

Text has a way of preserving its meaning and message far longer than
anything else created by man. Can we truly conceive of what life was like
in the time of Shakespeare? Sanitation was almost unknown. Food was monotonous,
mealy, and plain (recall that people travel across the globe to get pepper,
cinnamon, gloves, and nutmeg). Death was all around. Messages took months
to travel distances that take moments today.

Written words are the finest tools for logical thinking and preservation
of factual accuracy that man has ever known. Although it is possible to
lie with text, it is almost impossible to do so very long with much success.
Pretty quickly, even the most subtle liar will get tripped up and pretend
to not know what "is" is.

Contrast conservatives (by whatever name we have been called through
the ages) with modern liberalism and its ancestors. What do liberals want?
Images, pictures, and noise - whatever appeals to emotion over reason.
Liberals accept the strange notion that "the camera never lies"
but of course it does. Film-making and celebrity are drenched in rogue,
camera angles, selective editing, background music, and a dozen other
tricks are intended to present a case by means other than words - words,
the great equalizer of mankind and the great guardian of integrity.

Liberals also try hard to twist, invent, and even abolish words. We no
longer have "firemen" or "policemen" even though the
term is very descriptive (the overwhelming majority of firefighters and
police officers are men). This infamous "politically correct"
lexicon has created a weird lexicon of foolish words and phrases like
"morally challenged" and "differently abled" and created
zany concepts like "homophobic" and "speciesism."

The left also tries to drown the substance of written words in oceans
of drivel. Statutes, regulations, judicial opinions, and other writings
produced by the left are intentionally complex and lengthy, as if making
documents incomprehensible to ordinary people was evidence of intelligence
and industry, rather than stupidity and sloth.

These modern liberals are actually members of an ancient type of oligarches:
those who wish to crush the individual mind by depriving it of the tools
needed to be free. These oligarches build giant monuments to proclaim
the puniness of each of us in comparison to our governors. They created
spectacles in the Coliseum, which over time grew more gruesome and more
macabre, as a way to hypnotize the people of Rome and to keep them content
with "bread and circuses."

In Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia, they made wonderfully crafted films
and magnificent gatherings, with the specific intention of consuming whole
each person wrapped up in the choreographed Party rallies, so that even
decent and educated Germans began to weep and scream "Heil Hitler!"
Then they began to burn books.

One of the great embarrassments to the Soviet Union was that its art
so closely resembled Nazi art and Fascist art, then when the labels fell
off the sculpture or poster, it was impossible (without a swastika or
hammer and sickle) to tell a strong Aryan couple looking toward the future
from a strong Soviet couple looking toward another future.

There is within this very old ideology of what we call "liberalism"
- whether it is found in decadent emperors like Caligula, in hate-mongers
like Hitler, or in the Big Brother of 1984 - a common emotional
component: pathological immaturity. Is this not precisely what we see
in liberal Democrats today? They yawn while the leader of America speaks
to the world about our war on terrorism. They sneak into the Oval Office
and play "doctor" with younger children. They stand at the podium
in presidential debates and talk down to us.

These childish adults do not read books; they watch television. They
do not "get" talk radio because words are used to communicate
information and ideas. They teach our children to "feel" rather
than to "think" and dislike standardized tests (or any objective
standards) because words cannot truly capture what they are attempting
to reach.

They grow old not understanding how the wisdom of age has eluded them.
They pant each day for news of the next great menace or newest villain
to make their blood boil. All colored lights and loud noises, to drown
out the words within them. Television, rock bands, movie glitz, new gadgets,
splashy pictures of young girls on magazine covers - anything but words
with permanent meaning.

These modern liberals are doomed, as much as anything else, by the horrifying
boredom of existence without the blessing of meaningful words. They have
chosen to lynch their own souls. Terrified of life; terrified of death;
and terrified of truth, they seek to end purpose by smashing words.

_________________________________________

Bruce Walker has been a dyed in the wool conservative since, as
a sixth grader, he campaigned door to door for Barry Goldwater. Bruce has had
almost two hundred published articles have appeared in the Oklahoma Bar Journal,
Law & Order, Legal Secretary Today, The Single Parent, Enter Stage Right,
Citizen's View, The American Partisan, Port of Call, and several other professional
and political periodicals.